Brief Bio

I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University and Chair of the Feminist Scholarship Division (FSD) of the International Communication Association (ICA).

I received a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and an M.S. from Ohio University after studying Journalism Studies, Communication and Media Studies, and American Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. I also earned a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Maryland.

In my research I am interested in the intersection of social media, minorities and gender as well as the democratic potential of social media and international comparative work. I have published articles in New Media & Society; the International Journal of Communication; Media, Culture & Society;Health Communication;Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, and the Journal of Communication Inquiry as well as several book chapters. I was a team member for a grant from the World Health Organization and Co-P.I. for a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

My teaching experience includes feminist media theory; interviewing as a research method; journalism and new media; introduction to news reporting; broadcast news reporting, writing and editing; media literacy; journalism and media history.

I initiated and co-founded the #WikidGRRLS project to teach middle and high school girls how to create content on knowledge sharing sites such as Wikipedia. WikidGRRLS was awarded a several grants from the Future of Information at the University of Maryland, the College of Fine, Performing, and Communication Arts at Wayne State University and Wayne State University.